"How E-Waste Benefits Your Children"

It has always been "think about the children", perhaps.

Programming was made for children.   OEMs used it to sell the appliance to the parents.



So, the electronics get sold to us via "cognitive risk" - that our children will be left behind socially and intellectually if they don't get the electric gadget.  Then, if we sell it for reuse (so someone doesn't buy a brand new one), we are sold the cognitive risk the "e-waste" poses to the poor black children.

It's all about consumption, selling consumption any way they can.  We own stocks and retirement IRAs in their corporations and can't complain too loudly about the way they market sans sustainability.  And ENGOs are really not any different at all in their use of this "think of the children" marketing.  But we can be smart about what panics us.

I'm from the WWF generation - that's "World Wildlife Fund".  That's when Greenpeace was powered by Jacques Cousteau, and caring about endangered species and whales.   It's a dicey topic to debate which we should care more about - whale, tiger, orangutan, and rhino extinction vs. toxics in a child's environment.

But let's start by being smart.  What are the real numbers?  What are the real risks?  Is this about children's health, or is it about planned obsolescence?  Look at the enormous resources spent on non-toxic ink cartridge refilling.  Grinding those cartridges into pieces of plastic to be plastic-recycled in China is a lot worse of a job than refilling those ink cartridges with new ink for the "grey market".   But look at the attention given to ink cartridge refill risk vs. plastic recycling.

It's howdy doody time, it's howdy doody time...



My mom told me all about Howdy Doody.   I have not passed the information on to my kids.

Howdy Doody is an American children's television program (with circus and Western frontierthemes) that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United Statesfrom 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it was also a pioneer in early color production as NBC (at the time owned by TV makerRCA) used the show in part to sell color television sets in the 1950s.




Of course, electronics manufacturers are not alone in using children to market products.